Chemical education in the Philippines

(Second of a series)

The Philippine higher education system

The educational system of the Philippines consists of compulsory 10-year basic education administered by the Department of Education, post-secondary technical-vocational education under the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority, and higher education under the Commission on Higher Education (CHED). This division into three sub-systems is a result of a major review of Philippine education undertaken over a three-year period by the Joint Legislative-Executive Commission on Education (EDCOM) co-chaired by no less than the chairs of the Senate and House committees on education. EDCOM made very specific recommendations for actions to be taken by both branches of government to reform the educational system, including the creation of the Commission on Higher Education.

The Philippine tertiary education system is a very complex one with over 1,400 colleges and universities, approximately 80 percent of which are in the private sector and only about 20 percent in the public sector. The enrollment shares of the two sectors are approximately in the same proportion. The private schools are owned and managed by religious organizations, some by family corporations and a few by stock corporations. While the public schools are almost completely financed by the government, the private schools are financed mostly by tuition fees from students. This has advantages and disadvantages. One advantage is that the sector is market-driven. However, this could also be a disadvantage. Expensive programs, such as Chemistry, are not offered, or if they are, quality suffers. Expenses are minimized by heavy faculty loads, large classes and very little hands-on experience. Before the passage of the law creating the Commission the only support that the private schools could receive from the government was in the form of tuition scholarships for students and limited faculty development funds.

The Commission on Higher Education, soon after its creation, formed technical panels in the different fields of education. A Technical Panel for Natural Science and Mathematics, with a sub-committee on Chemistry, was formed. The panel is composed of discipline experts from academe, industry and other agencies such as the Professional Regulation Commission. The technical panel is tasked to recommend to the Commission on Higher Education minimum standards, policies and guidelines to govern the different academic programs and to propose development projects for the improvement of these programs. The law creating the Commission also provided for the establishment of the Higher Education Development Fund that is meant to support development programs of higher education institutions, public or private. This fund is meant to be under the complete control of the Commission and is not subject to the annual budgetary allocation process.

Status of chemistry education

There are very few program offerings in Chemistry in the country. The present count is only 46 undergraduate programs, with approximately 4,000 enrollees and approximately 780 graduates, annually. Chemistry is unique among the science programs in that the graduates are required to take a professional licensing examination to practice the profession which is governed by a specific law, “The Chemistry Law.” During the period 2003-2007, 2,679 graduates took the examination and only 1,251 passed (46.7 percent). The number of examinees has been declining over the years. Some of the schools, because of the expense of running Chemistry programs and declining enrollments, have closed or are thinking of closing down their programs. 

Of the 46 HEIs offering the B.S. Chemistry program, 14 offer the Master’s program (13 Chemistry and one Biochemistry) and five offer the Ph.D. program (four Chemistry and one Biochemistry). However, the number of graduate students is small (average of 22 per department) except for that of the University of the Philippines Diliman, with about 115. The rate of graduation at the graduate level is very low, 7.6 percent at the master’s level and 7.1 percent at the doctoral level. The students are mostly scholars of the Department of Science and Technology or the Commission. They are faculty members or employees of government research institutes. Very few are from private industry.

The new policies and standards formulated by the Technical Panel in Natural Science and Mathematics require at least one Ph.D. and three M.S. degree holders for a department to offer a bachelor’s degree. Not all the existing programs have the faculty complement required. Only about a third meet this requirement. The others have mostly M.S. and B.S. degree holders in the faculty. A recent decision to include Quantum Chemistry in the undergraduate curriculum met opposition because of the lack of qualified teachers.

The B.S Chemistry curriculum is, in general, patterned after the US model. All students are required to take 51 units (one unit is equivalent to one hour of lecture or two hours of laboratory for a semester of 17-18 weeks) of “general education” courses, which include breadth courses in the Natural Sciences, Social Sciences and the Humanities. These are intended to correct for the two years lacking in basic education, to give the students a broader perspective of the different disciplines and hopefully to bridge the gap between the so-called two cultures. In addition, the Chemistry majors take at least 48 units of Chemistry and the requisite Mathematics and Physics courses (25 units including Math courses included in the General Education curriculum). The 48 units is made up of two semesters of General Chemistry, two semesters of Organic Chemistry, two semesters of Analytical Chemistry, one semester of Inorganic Chemistry, one semester of Biochemistry, and three semesters of Physical Chemistry. In addition they take six units of electives which may include Applied Chemistry courses such as Polymer Chemistry, Environmental Chemistry, etc. Almost all of the Chemistry courses include a laboratory portion. The students are required to write a thesis for graduation or do an industry practicum. Use of computers is integrated in many of the Science courses.

The Technical Panel also recommended a set of major instrumentation to be required of all departments offering the bachelors degree. This includes the following: AAS, GC, UV-VIS, HPLC, IR and electrophoresis apparatus. A survey in 1996 showed that only seven departments had all these equipment available for undergraduate student use. Library facilities are also problematical. A decision was made in the early 90s to get at least one set of the most important journals available in the country. These are now housed in the Science library of the University of the Philippines Diliman with the agreement that these be made available to everyone. An electronic network was also set up in seven Science libraries so that the library materials may be made available electronically.

(To be continued)

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Dr. Ester Albano-Garcia is currently the president of the University of the East, a position she has held since 2006. She was chairman of the Commission on Higher Education from 1999-2003. From being chair of the UP Department of Chemistry in Diliman in the late 1970s, she was promoted to associate dean of the Natural Sciences and Mathematics division of the College of Arts and Sciences. She was assistant to the UP President for Science and Technology and a member of the Project Advisory Group of the World Bank Engineering and Science Education project of the DOST from 1993 to 1998, while simultaneously chairman of the CHED-DOST Technical Working Group. Albano-Garcia, together with other concerned scientists, was one of those who influenced the creation of the PhD consortium in chemistry, which to date has enabled the UP to graduate 25 PhDs in chemistry, bringing her closer to her vision of the “critical mass” that hopefully will one day put our country in the science and technology map.